A few blocks beyond the trees around Port Neches-Groves High School in Port Neches, Texas, gray towers jut into the air. The towers help cool factories that use chemicals to make rubber and plastics the kind of chemicals that former students there say gave them cancer.

President Bush next week will seek formal comment from his Cabinet agencies on a plan that could make three of the world's most remote and pristine island chains off limits to commercial fishing and mineral exploration.

Some of the government's top scientists were forced by Vice President Cheney's office to downplay the health dangers of global warming when testifying before Congress, a former senior EPA official said Tuesday.

Seeking to play down the effects of global warming, Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete from congressional testimony references about the consequences of climate change on public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday.

Seeking to downplay the effects of global warming, Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete references about the consequences of climate change on public health from congressional testimony, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday.

Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.

The Group of Eight leading industrial nations on Tuesday endorsed halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, edging forward in the battle against global warming but stopping short of tough, nearer-term targets.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency initially supported giving California and other states full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions -- but reversed himself after hearing from the White House, a report said Monday.